Mozilla’s Advantage in Mobile

One of the major technology spaces still up for grabs is mobile. Apple led out with the i-series of mobile devices (iPhone, iPad), running iOS, while Google came back with third-party manufactured Android and their own Google-designed Nexus devices. Of course, Microsoft has their devices and their mobile operating system, but they are playing catch-up.

Mozilla has come in late with the FirefoxOS, and without plans for their own hardware. Yet they have a distinct advantage.

One of the frustrating things about new technologies from the big three (Apple, Google, and Microsoft) is lack of integration. Especially if you don’t standardize your technology choices on one of them, but even then.

For example, you can subscribe to various publications or buy certain media from these technology vendors (and others, like Amazon), but you don’t necessarily get equal access from all your platforms. Indeed, some of your platforms may be wholly excluded.

That’s the most common case for me, as a Linux user. There isn’t a native client for accessing media on Linux, and the web offering is usually inferior (example, with the streaming music services). In some cases the web offers no solution, mostly in the case of video. A few video providers utilize Adobe Flash, but these require an obsolete library, HAL, to support their copy protection schemes (“DRM”).

But that’s why Mozilla has a strong position: the native web. It lacks some features, but it can gain them. As it develops, it will provide the strongest point for integration between platforms.

Google recently announced their “Play News Stand” application for Android. It’s an application to deliver news to you, and some of the content is purchased. But there’s no web version. There is less incentive than ever for users to buy content that’s only accessible on one device.

Consumers don’t want to switch all their device profiles and operating systems to one vendor simply to gain the marginal benefit of equal access. The economics aren’t there. They don’t get cheaper access. All they get right now is access to one shop per device.

Credit card companies would not be the force they are today if their cards only worked at just one vendor, or even a handful of vendors. True market capitalism requires open markets, and that’s what the web represents, what the web (and any viable replacement for the web) must evolve into.

Mozilla’s road may be rocky in establishing FirefoxOS and its benefits. The web as a platform has much growing up to do (especially in things like having a common user interface for applications developed by different vendors), but it has every sign that it will.